If I had the choice, really, I would just talk about some of the awesome food I ate in NYC, because really there are few things I like better than feeding my face with good stuff. But I did some other pretty awesome things, mostly spurred on by anonymous comments (thank you for those, again). There were a few things I would have liked to do that I just didn't have time for (it would take a loooong time to cover it all, and a bit of luck to get things like tickets to The Daily Show/Colbert Report)
So here's what I did in the few days of the New Year I spent in New York City once I recovered from my hangover:
January 2: I had planned to buy a Metro ticket, but by the time I realised that the ticket machines weren't accepting cards because it was a public holiday and the banks were closed, I had walked up into Times Square - it felt a bit silly to purchase a ticket when I could look around now that it was empty and the walk to where I was going next was not exactly far off:
Photos will show this better than I do (at this point they will probably go up after I return, we'll see), but the views you get up there are spectacular! It was a great way to really start properly touring the place, because I could really get a sense of what it ws like, even from so high up.
Down the bottom, I went to the first of three skating rinks I'd visit and not actually skate on for various reasons. The reason I didn't skate at Rockefeller is because they were making a large crowd wait to get in a line to buy tickets, and then wait in another line to hire skates, and then wait in another line to actually skate... There was not point in waiting all that time when I could
Which was interesting seeing as none of the trains that left from there were going to take me where I wanted to go, so there was almost little point in being there, haha! Still, it was nice to go see the roof, just that main central foyer, still looking like it's a piece of unchanged history. Really cool!
A lot of things were closed this day, so unfortunately I didn't do much else besides sort of addressing this one:
Truth be told, even at home I am not big on shopping, and over here I do not have a lot of ability to haul much stuff around with me. So I compromised on this one and just looked in some trendy places, including Saks on 5th avenue where you can buy a thin piece of fabric that looks vaguely like a summer dress for $2000. You know, if you are that kind of person.
January 3: Tuesday I headed out first to a second ice rink, this time the one at Citi Park, where I looked at the prices for tickets on top of skate hire and decided to go spend the money on a crepe instead (it was pretty damn good too). Back in DC I bought some pencils and a sketch pad, because silly me when packing thought that I wouldn't feel the need to draw and write stuff when I was out and about. So I attempted to do some drawings while sitting in the park, but it was really quite cold, so that idea did not last long.
The NYPL was right next to the park, so after being disappointed by the large, closed doors yesterday, I went right in today! The place was big and huge, and even though I had been sent here on a specific mission, I did have a bit more of a look around, and became rather disappointed by the restrictions on photography (you can't take any in most places inside). I didn't bring a book with me, but I did sit inside the vast, oddly quiet room inside the library and read a bit of Tennyson that I'd found on the shelves.
On the first floor, they were having a 100 year anniversary exhibition, with everything from the original Winnie the Pooh toys that have always lived there, to Kerouac's harmonica and some of his original drafts, and things like really old anatomical illustrations.
I'm not sure how well they maintain the mural in here, or if it was meant to be as dull as it was - it didn't seem it was meant to though, which was a little disappointing that the colours have faded. The upkeep of the 1920s art deco architecture and detailling was, honestly, a bit cooler. The part of the mural that impressed me the most was the part depicting the Chrysler Building itself, that looked great! (and yes, there are photos).
It was pretty damn cold on this day, mind you, and my thermals were well and truly getting a work out. So I wanted to head somewhere that was inside and warm again. I found myself over at the Ford Foundation building - What the Ford Foundation is isn't actually important - the building looked like a pretty standard office building until you got inside, and realised that the offices are only around the outside of the building: The entire middle of the place is taken up by a large garden which they change up seasonally. It was a nice place to sit for a while, and is free to the public during the day all year round. Really nice.
It was still early but also still really cold, so I went a few blocks down the road to a cinema to see Hugo after that. It is a pretty awesome movie and kept me out of the cold air, and was much better than the cramped quarters of the hostel.
January 4: I'd been looking forward to Wednesday since I had really organised myself on my hangover day. I was only doing two things on this day, but they were both pretty cool.
I started with the second of these, but getting there was a bit of an effort - I went to the wrong subway station - it was one of the few manned ones, but the lady there was unhelpful and rude when I tried to ask her if it was the right station, being told it was by her and that it wasn't by someone else... Anyway. By the time I'd finished there, I was not going to make it there by Subway, so had to take a Taxi.
The thing about NYC is that most of Manhattan is on a numbered grid - easier to follow than Melbourne. Greenwich Village, though, is right at the Southern end where rich people used to live on massive fields, and wouldn't let the government put them on a grid when they were making all the roads, so it's a curvy mess. The Taxi driver got lost several times over and actually tried asking me for directions... He did not get a tip.
Somehow I managed to meet up with the tour just before they started, so that was OK in the end!
It was a fantastic tour too, we ate at some great places, from famous pizza places to some absolutely delicious olive oil (and honey with white truffle in it). Needless to say, by the end I was stuffed, and quite happy to roll back to the hostel for a while.
Not for the rest of the day, though. That night I was off up Broadway, way up to the Gershwin Theatre to see Wicked. I'd somehow managed to get front and centre on the mezzanine level, just above the top-paying orchestra seats. It was only a little above the amount I'd budgeted for tickets, but I'd been pretty good with spending up to this point, so it wasn't an issue (then I went and spoiled myself on a couple of souvenirs afterwards). The show was amazing even if it didn't include any of the actors that my theatre friends rave about - Chandra Lee Schwartz was Glinda and Jackie Burns was Elphaba (The wicked Witch of the West, for those not in the know). It was a bit slow at the start but they definitely deserved the standing applause by the end of the show, it was brilliant. I hung around for signatures afterwards and got to meet Chandra Lee Schwartz and Etai BenShlomo (who played Boq, a munchkin boy that finds himself in a one-sided relationship with Elphaba's younger sister) as well as one of the chorus members... They closed the stage door for signatures early though, which was unfortunate!
Still it was a good day and I'm pretty happy to rub it in people's faces about how lucky I was!
January 5: After the great night on Broadway, I found myself having trouble sleeping in the hostel - it wasn't quite as cold as the night before, but someone had left the heater on before turning the lights out - a bit of a no no, because it had a habit of rattling loudly, whining, and every so often sounding like it was about to explode. It was not something a normal person could sleep through, and turning it off when it was making those sounds was often dangerous - it was all metal aside from the plastic knob that did not give much room for hands, and it was all to easy to burn yourself, especially when making those noises (when it was at its hottest).
It didn't help that my half of the room was woken by someone turning the lights on, and then the rest of the place was woken by one of my room-mates stomping around and then spotting me sitting up to see what the hell was going on - he asked me if I spoke French, I said "Not really" in English, which apparently did not do, so I made the mistake of saying "Not much, very bad" in French. He then started spouting rapid fire questions at me in French, a few of which I understood but had no clue how to answer beyond "I don't know". He grew more frustrated, but finally in the end decided he was done and asked me a question I finally knew how to answer - should he turn off the light? "OUI."
Not a good start to the day.
Seeing as I'm not a blonde in a blonde joke, this was actually difficult, and admittedly I failed. I got on the Ferry, at least, and froze my face off on the outside of it, taking photos of the Statue of Liberty and looking at the city getting further away. As the ferry was free, stowing away was difficult, but I figured they would want everyone to unload before it went back, so I did see if I could find somewhere to hide, and that would be, I supposed, equivalent to stowing away on a free trip.
The problem came when they announced that that particular ferry was docking at the island for the day, so there went that idea. I caught a different ferry back in the only way available, which is to say, legally.
From there I made my way towards the 9/11 memorial, cold and again grumpy and tired. I didn't end up going in, because apparently you need to book tickets in advance... I could have done so on my phone right then and there, and gone in an hour or two later, but I felt discouraged when I looked inside and saw a gift shop... Moving on, I thought.
Being tired as I was, there was not much else I wanted to do that day, so I ended up heading back to Greenwich Village and having a brownie that has apparently won awards at a place called Milk and Cookies.
Back at the hostel that night, there was talk of a pianist playing downstairs that night. The Hipster cafe had a little balcony overlooking the performance area, so I set myself up there with my laptop and dinner, and later regretted it when it turned out he was apparently of the post-modern movement in music, and his playing involved sounding classical for a moment before what sounded like he was bashing his head on the keys repeatedly. I've listened to music like this before and it can be done right, but not when you have fancy wording all around your name and apparently take yourself very seriously. What a noise...
January 6: Back to this one:
So with the inconsiderate Frenchman gone, the next day was a lot more pleasant to begin with! I headed Uptown to the Frick Art Collection, another really beautiful place that I am unable to share visually because of camera restrictions.
The gallery is in a house once owned by a rich guy called Henry Clay Frick, who was a massive art collector - all the artworks in the gallery now were owned and displayed by him. It hadn't been intended to be a gallery - well, aside for two of the rooms which he did open up to the public - but the house is very well set up for it, especially with some paintings either taking up whole sections of wall, or being painted directly on to them, and the architecture of the place being subtle but unbelievably well thought out - almost everything from the marbling on the floors, to the sculpting on the fireplaces to the skirting on the ceiling are art pieces.
Frick's collection mostly consisted of Renaissance art, though downstairs the current owners were hosting a Picasso exhibition - they had more of his realist pieces than the cubist paintings that made him famous, as well as some stuff from when he was 9 (even at a young age he whipped other kid's butts at drawing, by the way).
Next I headed all the way to the Southern end of Central Park to see the last ice skating rink, and again did not go skating because the price did not outweigh the fact that I've been ice skating before with different scenery and it tends to be more fun when you're with other people. But anyway, I was in Central Park, and had just as much fun looking at still-frozen lakes, statues and getting lost in general. I made it up to places like "Strawberry Field", the spot where John Lennon was assassinated that is now the place of a mosaic tribute, the Alice in Wonderland statue and many other places that you see in movies and on TV. Basically, I only wandered around the Southern half (if I was lucky) and my legs were tired by then. The place was bigger than I thought.
Tired as my legs were, I still had one more place to see for the day.
A disclaimer: While I can look at architecture and say 'oh that looks nice', I am not well versed and so as my dad said:
"Here's this huge, ornate, historic Cathedral, that took 50 years to build and had stone hacked out of centuries old quarries in Italy, craftsman who were specially bred for the job...... .... 'stained glass was nice I suppose'"
That was in response to me actually saying that last part, sorry to everyone for my ignorance on this part, haha (note - most of what he says is not true at all please don't be fooled).
But it was a beautiful cathedral, even if I feel St. Pat's has it beat on the interior. They had some art exhibition on the importance of water, some of which was nice, some of which was probably a little too modern to look great inside such an old building. There was someone playing piano in one of the rooms at the very back of the church, and they really showed off the amazing acoustics of the place - you could hear it clearly at the front entrance, without speakers.
January 7: What I thought at the time was going to be my last proper outing in NYC but I'd prove myself wrong the next day. I gave myself the whole of this day to visit the Museum of Natural History, which looked almost disappointingly different to how it appears in Night at the Museum (I've had to watch the film enough times for Cubs, the place could be decent enough to look the same!), partly because there were a number of areas going through refurbishments in the off season.
Even so, the place was pretty damn cool, and I saw a lot of neat stuff - I didn't realise there would be a place that could beat Bass Pro Shop (an outdoors store Amanda and Tiffiny took me to in 2007) with the sheer amount of taxidermy! I probably liked the section on evolution best - it was great to really see the connections between sets of skeletons that have been dug up, and the museum has really gone to some effort in recreations of faces and bodies. I really liked their Big Bang timeline as well, it was a bit of fun and pretty cool the way it was done (you started off watching a movie, and then the timeline was a spiral starting from the Big Bang at the top, to the present day at the bottom).
I probably would have like the dinosaurs a bit more, but by the time I got up to them, it was a bit later in the day - on a weekend - and the families complete with young children and older people with mobility issues had come out in force. Trying to move anywhere was frustrating, and it became difficult to get a proper look at some of the stuff.
Still, it was a pretty cool day :)
January 8: There had been talk of going to have breakfast at Tiffiny's before I left, but lack of space and the cold weather tended to mean that I wore bulkier, warmer clothing for the bus, and check out meant not opportunities to really change clothes unless I wanted to go through the ordeal of re-packing my bag in a public bathroom. So lumped with clothing that was not looking to great, I scratched that out, and headed over to Hoboken over in New Jersey instead. There was only really one mission for this - visit Carlos Bakery for mum, who likes to tell people she's not a fan of Cake Boss even though she watches it all the time. Knowing their reputation for using more rice k(c?)rispies than actual cake (as seen on TV), I decided not to go for cake and had a rather average chocolate chip cookie instead. But hey, I've been there.
I still had a bit of time to kill, and felt it was best spent eating better food, so I went and had some strawberry crepes at a nearby cafe, followed by ice cream at the Ben and Jerry's store down the road.
Soon enough, it was time to head back over to NYC and start a long trip (on nice buses, at least) to Savannah.
